Shipping costs

[Bobtheblob]

I walked the dog this morning and got into a blizzard of hail - really nasty on my bare cheeks!

Should have worn your underpants and trousers then.

 

[Clint]

Exactly! Living out there in the wild haggis region is no excuse to walk around in the nip.

 

[kelper]

Should have worn your underpants and trousers then.

keep the day job!

 

[Nidger]

I keep using Wilko. If I send photos of damaged stuff they often refund me in full. None of the dented cans has leaked so I used them. I think their kits are great value. I'm also keen to keep trying new brews. It's to cold/wet to use my all-in-one outdoors.

I walked the dog this morning and got into a blizzard of hail - really nasty on my bare cheeks!

My delivery of kits from brew2bottle recently were individually bubble wrapped but the box was crushed and the coopers bitter can badly dented.
Fortunately not leaking as you say.

 

[Nidger]

Exactly! Living out there in the wild haggis region is no excuse to walk around in the nip.

Could be the wind up his tartan skirt

 

[VW911]

A lot of the time, especially with Amazon, the companies that charge shipping fees work out cheaper.
You can generally buy multiple items, but only pay one lot of postage...

 

[kelper]

A kilo of spraymalt is about £7 but on eBay, it would be double that with postage. I guess I'll wait until my next order with B2B when it might be back in stock.
My beers are fine but I would like better head retention. Some kit beers seem very variable. My all-time-favourite is St Peter's IPA but even the colour seems to vary. The best one was too dark to be a pale ale but everything else about it was liquid paradise.

 

[Ale House Rock]

Brew2Bottle have increased their shipping costs from £3.95 to £15 for the Highlands. I'll be shopping around now as they are no longer competitive.

There was a glitch on their website recently. £15 charge to central Scotland even tho order was over £50. That was fixed. I don't know how 'remote' you are but the gov.scot website has info on 'fair' delivery charges to remote parts of Scotland.

 

[B2B]

Morning guys

I think an explanation is needed here.

During the first lockdown we had to switch from Parcel Force because they couldn't keep up with the volumes. We followed what people wanted and brought DPD in to deliver our larger shipments and it has been in general well received. A consequence of this though is that shipments to the further reaches of the UK are now more expensive. We don't make any money on shipping parcels out and in most cases what we charge is subsidised a little by ourselves to keep the costs to you as low as possible.

So the costs we're having to charge to get a parcel to the highlands is a little less than what it actually costs us now. We will however be bringing a tiered system back into place in the new year when we get some time to work through it where smaller orders that can ship via Royal Mail still will be subject to the £3.50 charge to anywhere in the UK or free if the order is over £50 as usual. We need the time to put this in place though, every item we have for sale needs dimensions and weights entering into our back end system so it can sort through the orders and decide the best way to ship it without manual intervention.

We're sorry we had to do this at this time of the year but it was costing us too much money to ship to some areas, we've had bills of up to £70 just to deliver parcels on one order due to the number of boxes. We're working to improve this and get it back to as cheap as possible for you guys though and if anyone has a small order they want to place that we can ship via Royal Mail we can process that over the phone if you want and the usual shipping charges will apply if it's possible.

Regards Amazon, sometimes they are cheaper yes for an individual item but in general a basket of several items will cost more. The reason being is every price you see on Amazon has the cost of shipping built into it, there is no such thing as free shipping on Marketplaces. If you built a basket of 4-5 items on Amazon you'd be paying for shipping 4-5 times.

Right now we're almost caught up in the warehouse, just a couple of days behind now, but with the shadow of next week already starting to lurk, and the number of orders starting to increase again for Crimbo, hand on heart it will be next year before we can do anything to fix this.

Again sorry for the recent changes to our shipping policies, we've always tried to keep them as low as possible to make everything as accessible to customers as possible but we simply can't afford to pay £70 shipping to get a £140 order to a part of the country deemed hard to reach by the couriers. We'll work around this though and come up with something better once it has settled down a bit but in the meantime if we can ship something by Royal Mail we will do, just give us a call or drop us a mail and we'll get back to you asap.

Cheers

 

[kelper]

I think an explanation is needed here.

Fair enough. I did eventually place an order with you yesterday because the overall cost was lower than other companies. For me, the problem with DPD is they don't cover my area, so all parcels are thrown into a yard in Inverness, or even over the fence, and collected by a local delivery company. My parcels often arrive in poor condition due to this. With Parcel Force and Royal Mail I don't get this problem.

 

[kelper]

@Brew2bottle Homebrew

What weight/size parcels might you send by Royal Mail? My postcode is KW14.

 

[B2B]

Thats really poor service and I'm sorry to hear that. I'll take that up with DPD and get a response. They've recently bragged about spending £200 million to bring in more drivers and improve their network so it's surpising that they rely on a 3rd party to finish deliveries for them.

With the Royal Mail we work on an average weighting system for the parcels we send out to get a cost from them. We can balance some heavier shipments off against some of the very light ones we send to bring our average parcel weight down. We could send you a parcel up to around 5kg though for the usual cost and provided we weren't sending thousands a week out like this it shouldn't affect our average too much.

 

[B2B]

Just a further point on marketplaces such as Amazon. Amazon sell very few home brew related items themselves, you can sometimes find items that are fulfilled by Amazon and subject to the same shipping services as Prime but that is down to a reseller like ourselves to get those items into Amazons warehouse and then it becomes a game of maths and how quickly you can sell something without racking up the storage charges that will incur.

99.9% of what you see on Amazon is listed by a store like ourselves or another from across the country and as well as the inbuilt "free shipping" Amazon also take a decent commission on each sale for the privilidge of selling on there. That is often subsidised by the seller and in general won't be passed on 100%, but then that comes out of the sellers pocket. A race to the bottom ensues as competitors chase the sale which is why Amazon can sometimes be cheaper than buying from your local store or online. It's not always a great deal for all concerned on a marketplace, although for you guys it can be :)

The fact that the marketplaces have such pulling power due to the image that great deals can be had, which in a lot of cases they can be such as electricals, means that people want to buy home brew on there, the brands are trusted and they are super convenient. Once one shop lists on a marketplace though everyone with the capability to sell online has to follow though or potentially miss out.

In general though pretty much every home brew item on Amazon is shipping from a store like ours through their own couriers, not via Amazon themselves.

 

[kelper]

If I ordered 2 two-can kits and some spraymalt or tubing, you could split it into two parcels and it would still be half the cost! I'll phone you when you have wheat spraymalt back in stock

 

[B2B]

Sure that would work also. If you did 2 orders over the phone that added up to around 10kg you'd get the most possible for £7 shipping.

Malts are nowhere to be seen at the moment though, I keep chasing them. We have around 2 tonnes on order of the various shades.

 

[AMyd666]

"if anyone has a small order they want to place that we can ship via Royal Mail we can process that over the phone if you want and the usual shipping charges will apply if it's possible."

That's nice of you to offer that Brew2bottle. I rely on you for a lot of stuff (albeit not grain at the mo, when is that coming back?), as like Kelper I'm in that neck of the woods too. It has really bothered me the courier charges from of lots of places as it stops me buying grain and parts because of the weight and courier costs.

 

[B2B]

We held off changing the shipping costs as long as we could but it would have bitten us in the *** if we hadn't done it. Not only has the number of orders increased over the last month or so again but also the number of items per order has risen from around 4.5 to over 6. We'd have been losing money on more orders to the far flung reaches of the country.

Grains and Hops are something we're working on... tbh we have no space at the moment and ideally need a clean space to do them in. We have 8k sq ft of warehouse right now and it's packed to the rafters so we're trying to get additional space, once that is sorted we'll be able to start bringing the hops and grains back in but with a greatly increased range.

 

[clyne]

Glad I read this thread. In a very similar position to @kelper - had an order from brew2bottle, went to checkout then saw the high(er) shipping costs. Stopped in my tracks, shopped around but then eventually came back and completed the purchase, albeit grudgingly due to the £15 postage. As it was I topped up to make my worthwhile (and @kelper, I'll try to remember to give you a shout next time I order, I'd be happy to take a run up your way to deliver it FOC as we often take the dogs up west anyway). But to know that @Brew2bottle Homebrew are goign to go back to a tiered system in the new year and there is the option of doing a staggered delivery order over the phone is really good to know. Thanks chaps

 

[B2B]

If I ordered 2 two-can kits and some spraymalt or tubing, you could split it into two parcels and it would still be half the cost! I'll phone you when you have wheat spraymalt back in stock

Just a heads up, we have the 500g Muntons Spraymalts arriving today. No sign of the 1kg bags though sorry

 

[jayk34]

Just seen this post, had been waiting for a few things to come back in stock before ordering and just checked and jumped to £15 for me as well. Had placed several orders with brew2bottle lately due to the postage costs but may have to look elsewhere now